Review of “Are You Experienced” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience

Four weeks after that performance, the Experience would unveil Electric Ladyland, their third and final album, just three days following the second anniversary of their inaugural gig. The sheer audacity of this timeline is staggering: From the beginning of 1967 to the autumn of 1968, the Jimi Hendrix Experience produced and released three remarkable studio albums while consistently touring.

Axis: Bold as Love and Electric Ladyland ventured into increasingly experimental territory, transitioning from the sci-fi radio drama and noise quake of the former to the 14-minute journey of exotic percussion, tones, and experimental panning that characterized the latter. They were unequivocally following the path laid out by Are You Experienced while simultaneously forging new avenues with every endeavor. In my view, no other trilogy of rock records—be it Dylan going electric, the birth of Led Zeppelin, the Berlin trilogy, or the Beatles’ evolution into Revolver—can match the compactness, imagination, and significance in the history of rock’n’roll. Within a span of less than two years, The Jimi Hendrix Experience reshaped the future of music before vanishing.

“Is that the stars in the sky, or is it rain falling down?” Hendrix asked at the start of “Love or Confusion,” a track that buzzed energetically despite the underlying drone. “Will it burn me if I touch the sun? Yeah, so big, so round.” Indeed, fame took a toll on Hendrix. He grappled with the onslaught of fame, sex, and drugs, the relentless pace of his schedule, and the financial burden of constructing the sonic palace he envisioned, Electric Lady Studios, in Greenwich Village. The sessions for The Experience’s second and third albums became trials of endless takes, with unfulfilled expectations morphing into laborious tedium. Chandler departed before Electric Ladyland was completed.

After Redding’s exit in 1969, Hendrix embarked on an even grander vision for the Experience’s explorations with Band of Gypsys. However, this ended in a public spectacle of failure on stage at Madison Square Garden before the first album could be launched. “That’s what happens when Earth fucks with space,” Hendrix remarked to the audience as the brief set limped to a close. “Never forget that.” He was gone nine months later, nearly four years after arriving in London.

It’s tempting to linger on that timeline, to ponder what might have unfolded had Hendrix’s safety been prioritized over his financial viability, had he been provided with more robust safeguards amid his fame. Yet, it is far more uplifting to reflect on the nearly 60 years since he crafted Are You Experienced and celebrate him as the rarest rock’n’roll anomaly—a figure who gave wholeheartedly and completely, only to vanish for reasons beyond comprehension.

Countless of his former contemporaries, supporters, and imitators endure, still extracting the essence from rock’s desiccated form for a few more years. However, as an enduring idea birthed from a fleeting existence, Hendrix remains more potent and mesmerizing than them all. “We’ll get outdated,” Stella Benabou, who owned the record store frequented by Hendrix, expressed near the conclusion of 1973’s A Film About Jimi Hendrix. “He won’t.” Half a century later, he still hasn’t.